Southwest was built in the 1960's-1970's, and the architectural style of dark brick-and-concrete that dominates the area reflects the building philospohy of the times: a building should be functional, low in cost, and riot-proof. To get a good picture of a typical dorm look at http://www.housing.umass.edu/reshalls/southwest.html.

Dorms make up most of the buildings in Southwest. There are two types of dorms: towers and low rises.

The rooms themselves come in one of three forms: Z rooms, singles, and corner rooms. Z rooms are directly off of the hallways and are shaped like an L (not at all like a "Z", but this is UMass, after all). The outer part of the L has the window and is considered the "better" part of the room. The inner part bulges into the wall. Singles are also shaped like an L, without the inner bulge. The worst rooms of all are corner rooms. While the Z room provides privacy for each roommate, corner rooms are shaped like squares, and usually have bunk beds. These are at either end of each hallway, and form the characteristic concrete growths on the outside of the tower.

Low rises are "only" around 3-7 stories tall, depending. Architecture and layout is variable, though all rooms are either singles or corner rooms. The following is a list of the low rises, which are named after either famous people from Mass. or heavy contributers to the university: